Labour Policies : The Liberal Democrat Risk Policy

According to the Labour Party website the Labour Party will try to achieve the following if they retain power at the 2010 general election on May 6th:

The next election is a straight choice between Labour and the Conservatives. If people with progressive values don’t want to go back to the same old Tories, then backing Labour is the only way to prevent it.

The Liberal Democrats pose a real risk to Britain – not just by letting the Tories in through the back door – but through their own policies too.

Nick Clegg has moved the Liberal Democrats to the right – they have said they would make ‘savage’ cuts to frontline public services, scrap Child Trust Funds and cut Child Tax Credits and Winter Fuel Payments. But while the leadership of their party is trying to paint themselves as light yellow Tories, few in their party – or the country – want to see the ‘savage’ cuts that they are promising. Although on most issues they simply say whatever they think people want to hear, crime is one area where they have remained consistent – continuing to promote a soft-on-crime policy that would fail local communities across the country.

Like Labour, the Liberal Democrats agree that the Tory plans to make immediate cuts in public spending would be a reckless gamble with the economy. However that’s where the similarities end. Nick Clegg’s call for “savage” cuts and the Liberal Democrats’ failure to commit to protecting the frontline services that millions rely on – from hospitals to schools – clearly illustrates the risk they pose. In their own words, under the Liberal Democrats, “everything is vulnerable”.

The Liberal Democrats are therefore a change that millions of families and pensioners just can’t afford. Just like the Tories, the Liberal Democrats are committed to scrapping essential support that families rely on like the Child Trust Funds and cutting vital support given through child tax credits. They also propose scrapping Winter Fuel Payments for millions of pensioners and are full of empty but expensive promises that they can’t deliver on.

Even on their supposed flagship proposals, like tuition fees, which were at the centre of their last election campaign, the Liberal Democrats just can’t make up their minds. Their continual u-turns have illustrated clearly that they just can’t be taken seriously. Instead they say one thing to one audience and another elsewhere, depending on what they think people want to hear.

The one area where the Liberal Democrats have been clear is that they are still as soft on crime as ever. They continue to campaign to restrict the use of DNA making it harder to catch and convict criminals and oppose vital measures to prevent crime and anti-social behaviour. The Liberal Democrats have demonstrated they can’t be trusted to take the tough action necessary to protect our communities.

By continuing to make uncosted promises whilst at the same time committing to billions of pounds of damaging cuts across government, the Liberal Democrats have shown they can’t be trusted to make the right decisions for the future.

Frontline services are of course areas where resources must be protected, but are they all operated in the most cost effective way? It seems reasonable to assume that there are cuts that can be made in these services without posing a risk to our standards of living. Labour, as always, are using scare tactics to try and sway the public, but it worries me a great deal more when a party claims they can save our economy without any kind of sacrifice in some of the main areas of spending. Labour are trying to say we can all have our cake and eat it, which makes me deeply suspicous. Both Labour and the Conservatives are using the tactic of saying a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote for the opposite party, but surely they can’t both be right!

A vote for the LibDems in a LibDem / Tory marginal is not necessarily a vote for Labour but is an anti-Tory vote; similarly a vote for the LibDems in a LibDem / Labour marginal is an anti-Labour vote. This is the great LibDem conundrum. They can only define themsleves in opposition to the other parties not as a party in and for themselves. Their election manifesto is an attempt to rectify this and what a dog’s breakfast that has turned out to be. It seems to be a mish-mash of left-leaning, then right-leaning policies that do not articulate to an cohenrent whole. They are, however, to be feared. If you are on benefits, or if you have pre-school children, or if you have a chronic medical condition, read the LibDem manifesto. It is more frightening than the Tories. No ruling out of cuts to working Tax Credits or, importantly, other benefits, means testing child benefit, no commitment to maintain existing NHS spending levels, and, most of all,no commitment to maintaining Sure Start or subsidised nursery places. Caring Liberalism? Mmmm. Vote Labour for all our children’s sake.